Biennial of Graphic Arts

Different venues, Ljubljana

The 29th edition presents the energy and vitality of the medium of the art event in contemporary art. A selection of art events are presented in four different groups based on topics that are typical for contemporary art: violence, generosity, emptiness, and the search for the sacred and ritualistic. The cross-section is able to serve as a comparison with similar topoi, practices, and phenomena in other fields, as well as from human history. Why and how has the event in particular become a suitable vehicle for such a great variety of artistic aims, aesthetics, and content? Is the choice of this medium a response to specific impulses and voids in our 'desacralized' everyday existence?

The exhibition will present the energy and vitality of the medium of the art event in contemporary art. A selection of art events will be presented in four different groups based on topics that are typical for contemporary art: violence, generosity, emptiness, and the search for the sacred and ritualistic. These topics were explicitly selected, among other reasons, because the events that thematize them also meet the requirement that they are not something new, neither in terms of their artistic iconographic motifs nor in terms of actual human or social practice. Events in which we can partake with impunity in violence, in “shamanistic” violence to oneself, in Dionysian or absurdist ritual, or in the establishment of an idyllic communitas that shares a common meal are, indeed, activities that, one might say, have been practiced and even depicted for millennia. The cross-section of contemporary art events presented at the exhibition will thus be able to serve as a comparison with similar topoi, practices, and phenomena in other fields, as well as from human history. And this comparison, in particular, could help us as we attempt to come to a stronger theoretical understanding of the art event as a medium of expression and as the functional apparatus of institutions of contemporary art.
The curator of the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana is Beti Žerovc.

This work, entitled Refuge, will focus on themes of migrations resulting from war or economic necessity, and displacements resulting from exploitation and environmental despoliation. It will dissect a global system built on cheap resources and cheap labour, and illustrate attempts to break out of that system’s constraints. The work will include kiosks distributing maps of the landscapes involved, and hidden within the narratives will be nests, places of refuge, where those in flux, whether humans, animals, or ideas, have taken rest.
Curator: Božidar Zrinski
Open: 22 September–20 November 2011, Alkatraz Gallery, Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm; opening on 22 September at 9 pm

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Accompanying exhibitions:

École de Paris
Seventeen art prints from the International Centre of Graphic Arts Collection will be on view. The prints of the representatives of École de Paris are the legacy of the Ljubljana Graphic Biennial. The exhibition is prepared in cooperation with Lek, member of Sandoz Group.
Curator: Breda Škrjanec
Open: 13 September – 30 September 2011, Lek Gallery, Monday – Sunday, 9 am – 7 pm; opening on
13 September at 7 pm

Event 29 Drafts; Designs Made by Visual Communication Students of the Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts and Design
Presentation of twenty-five conceptual formulations and designs of the visual identity for the 29th Graphic Biennial, prepared by the students of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, in visual communication seminars under the mentorship of Boštjan Botas Kenda, Radovan Jenko, and Ranko Novak.
Open: 18 October – 20 November 2011, International Centre of Graphic Arts, Tuesday – Sunday, 10 am – 6 pm; opening on 18 October at 6 pm